The Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics in Wowza Video are key performance indicators that measure various aspects of video streaming from the viewer’s perspective. These metrics help evaluate how effectively video content is delivered and how viewers experience the stream. Error-free sessions and error density metrics are crucial for stream performance as they directly measure user experience quality and system reliability, highlighting how often and how severely errors impact playback.
Error density measures the average number of errors per playback start. A playback start includes the initial start of a stream as well as any resume events after rebuffering or user-initiated pauses. Error-free sessions metric is the percentage of sessions with no fatal errors across any stream before or during playback. A session is considered error-free if no fatal errors occur at any time, either before or during playback.
Note:
- Quality of Experience metrics is a premium feature available exclusively to Wowza Video subscribers with an annual subscription. To access this feature for enhanced streaming insights, contact our sales team.
- For Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza Video subscribers, we provide Quality of Experience metrics, including video start time, for live streams and stream targets.
To get to the Errors detail page, click Analytics in the main navigation, then click the Quality of Experience tab. Under the Error-free sessions section, click Explore errors. You must have this QoE metric displaying data to access the Errors detail page.
The following configurations and fields can be found on the Errors detail page:
- Filter by – Filter data by a preset time frame or enter a custom time frame. You can also filter by stream type (live stream, video, or real-time stream), stream name, and device. Type in the Select assets field to filter the stream names and choose one. Click Apply Filter to apply changes.
The Errors detail page initially displays the top three errors from your initial QoE filtering on a graph. You can use the Filter by functionality to refilter and view updated data.
Note: When you filter the data, it is returned in the following intervals:
- If you filter data between 0 minutes and 8 hours, the granularity of the data returned is by minute.
- If you filter data between 8 and 24 hours, the granularity of the data returned is per hour.
- If you filter data between 24 hours and 175 days, the granularity of the data returned is per day.
- If you filter data between 175 days and 14 years, the granularity of the data returned is per month.
Note: If you are using one of the following Wowza Streaming Engine with Wowza Video workflows, you can view analytics for your live stream or stream target, depending on which workflow you've used. Type the live stream name or stream target name in the Select assets field to display the data.
View, change, and analyze data for the stream(s) you filtered for:
- Errors detail graph – Displays the errors for selected streams. Hover over the line chart to get specific errors encountered at a specific time for each stream. You can check the checkbox on up to five error types listed in the related Error list below the graph, then click Update graph to change the data you see on the graph.
- Errors detail list – The table lists all streams in the timeframe you filtered by. Select up to five streams to display on the graph by checking the checkbox next to the name of each stream you want to view, then clicking Update graph. The table includes:
- Error types – Select the type of playback error from the dropdown to sort the results by the specific error.
- Include non-critical errors – Check this box to include non-critical playback errors in the filtered results.
- Name – The name or type of the error. Click the error to view detailed information, including the affected streams, the displayed error message, and the resource URL of the streaming asset.
- Average retry count – The average number of times the player attempts to retry playback after encountering an error.
- Phone – The average retry count and number of plays for the stream for this device type.
- Desktop – The average retry count and number of plays for the stream for this device type.
- Tablet – The average retry count and number of plays for the stream for this device type.
- TV – The average retry count and number of plays for the stream for this device type.
- Other – The average retry count and number of plays for the stream for this device type.
- Total – The total number of devices that had a specific error across all device types.
More information
To learn more about QoE metrics, see the following articles:
